Surviving the Sports Abyss (Mar. 4, 2011)

The winter sports season at CSS came to a screeching halt within the past few weeks, leaving us with a tremendously long wait between home contests, 37 days (or more, depending on the weather) between the hosting of the UMAC Championship and the home opener for baseball on April 4. Which leaves us in the sports abyss. How do we, the sports fans of CSS, survive the sports abyss? Well, I have a few ideas:

Forgo actual sports by playing Strat-o-Matic. I first heard of this a couple years ago when reading Tim Kirkjian’s book, Is This a Great Game, or What?. It seems slightly complicated to my pea brain, but if that is the case, you could easily spend the first half of March figuring out how to play the game, then you would only have to entertain yourself for about 20 or so days. Win, win? I think so.

Assemble an ideal line-up for CSS baseball and softball using sabermetrics. Or read this profile on the father of sabermetrics, Bill James. Once the ball season begins, look here for an in-depth look at the teams using some of James’ statistical formulas (if I can ever figure them all out).

Nervously refresh your browser waiting for updates on the NFL standoff. This could take one day or a long time, and I wouldn’t suggest it. But it’s an idea!

Watch the Food network. If you’ve never watched the Food network, you likely know that they have several shows that feature cooking-based competitions. That’s just like sports! Delicious sports!

Invent new sports. I tried to find some cool new sports on YouTube, but I got distracted by highlights [lowlights] of Charlie Sheen interviews.

Read about how great the Saints are. There are a lot of articles available on our site about that very subject.

Find the Macho Man Randy Savage. And I thought my blogging was pointless sometimes.

Shovel snow. It sounds like most of Minnesota will be doing this anyways, so why not have a little fun with it?

Follow the Saints around the country! Sunny Florida sure seems nice after that forecast. The Saints baseball, softball, and tennis teams will all be in the Sunshine state for the week of Apr. 13-19. If that seems too far, you could also catch the baseball team in Chicago on Apr. 14. The track team will be in Myrtle Beach, S.C. on St. Patrick’s Day (Mar. 17) through the 19^th for the Shamrock Invite.

Follow the Saints online! This really only applies to the baseball team, but select games will be available online, courtesy of Ustream. For instance, this weekend’s games will be available. Other teams will have live stats available, but you’ll have to keep an eye on CSSSaints.com for that.

That’s all for now. Hope you found some entertainment here. Enjoy the weekend, stay safe in the snow!

Thanks.

I promised a proper blog this week, but I'm fresh out of ideas, so you're just going to have to settle for my heartfelt thanks and a pretty banner that I just whipped up in no time flat tireless worked on all afternoon.

The "thanks" is for anyone who has come to visit the blog throughout the school year, whether you enjoyed it or not, I appreciate the fact that you took the time to check out the work we are doing here. I'd like to say we have new and exciting things planned for next semester, but as of now, I've only got more of the same planned. But I digress. Again, thank you for checking out the blog, and I hope to have your continued support as we enter the second semester of VOTS next month.

The banner is to wish all Saints fans a very happy holiday season. I'm excited to get the family together and have a break from the hustle and bustle of the school year. So, to everyone who has checked out VOTS this year -- Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Joyous Ramadan, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday -- whatever you're celebrating this time of year, let it be good.

Sleep easy,
-jh

Points and Prattle, Vol. 6 - Oct. 23, 2009

Good morning, St. Scholastica!

It’s been a relatively quick week here at CSS Sports Information, but with men’s and women’s soccer home all weekend, it’s about to get busy for at least a few days. Even more importantly, we are just one week away from the start of hockey season. There’s no better feeling in the world.

• With winter sports starting next week, it’s a good thing I finished up the fall coaches in 5 Questions this week when we interviewed head women’s soccer coach Dave Reyelts. The interview went great, and it’s one of my favorites to date. (Who knew I was a poet?) So check it out.
• Dave’s lady Saints had their hands full last week with Crown and Northwestern colleges coming to town, but they escaped with a pair of wins thanks to late-game heroics and excellent goal-tending by sophomore ’keepers Bailey Mahlum and Erin Olejnicak.
• For her efforts, which included stopping three breakaway plays by the Storm in route to a shutout, Olejnicak was named the All-UMAC Defensive Player of the Week on Tuesday afternoon. Congrats Erin!
• Also named All-UMAC was volleyball’s Sarah Kurtovich, her second-such honor for setting duties in her freshman campaign. She averaged nine assists per set last weekend as the Saints swept Martin Luther 3-0 and edged Bethany Lutheran 3-1. They now have six straight wins going into tonight’s match-up with Minnesota-Morris, which can be seen on the Cougar Sports Network. And that has nothing to do with this sort of Cougar either.
• Men’s soccer had an interesting night on Wednesday as tempers flared against Augsburg. I wouldn’t say the chippiness was the reason, but the Saints did fall for the first time in five games by a 2-1 final. This weekend, Presentation and Minn.-Morris will get to face a frustrated Saints team, and I don’t envy the position. Goalkeeper Sam Reed is now third in the UMAC in goals against average and save percentage, as well as first in shutouts with seven.
• Football dropped their first conference game of the year last week to perennial conference power Northwestern by a 55-28 score. Senior Chris Henagin had another 100+ yard game on the ground as well as putting a pair of touchdowns on the board.
• I must first apologize because the last time I did one of these, I left out Cross Country. That was an accident on my part, and I want to say that the CC runners are just as important to us as any other sport. That being said, cross country competed at two different events last week, and did quite well for themselves.
• At the Concordia-Moorhead Cobber Invite, senior Tara Connolly ran third for the women who finished second overall while sophomore Jim Linn led the men to a third place finish, running 13th overall.
• Meanwhile, on the complete other side of the state (and even further, I suppose), six runners competed at the Wis.-Oshkosh Brooks Invite. Pat Bigaouette, Nick Mangan, and Tony Bye each ran personal bests that were good for second, fourth, and fifth all-time on the Saints all-time list. Katelyn Meger led the women with a 22nd place finish, while Jessie Lovering and Kristin Gronbeck each ran their season-best time.
• And I don’t know why I keep putting myself through this by posting the link, but I’ve certainly never been more “proud” of my hometown than I was upon reading this story.

While, that’s all for this week. Things will get pretty busy next week as fall and winter sports start to overlap, but I have something special planned to coincide with the start of hockey season, so stay tuned for that.

Have a fabulous weekend,
-jh
Go Saints!